Cracking the Mystery of Labor's Falling Share of GDP - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-24/cracking-the-mystery-of-labor-s-falling-share-of-gdp <comment><USER2> It's not much of a mystery to crack.

The chart starts in 1950 with 63.6%. In that year, one out of three American workers in the private sector were in a union. Today one out of fifteen American workers in the private sector are in a union. In the rust belt, the Wisconsin government has been waging a war against its unions, as it and other states become so-called right to work states.

Insofar as this "increas[ing] the risk of social instability", one reason for this is that more and more money is flowing to capital which doesn't even know where to invest it. The main reason so much capital is idle is due to existing overproduction (which you could also call underconsumption, it's the same thing). Workers/consumers are short-changed, so can buy less, whereas more money goes to capital, to build more products - for people who can't afford them. You can see what the main problem is. Consumer debt can solve this temporarily, but if the cut of the pie stays the same, it just postpones the crisis and makes it worse.

Things are fairly simple - there is an aristocracy of heirs who own rights to expropriate surplus labor time (which they call profits) from those of us who work and create all wealth. They are very well organized in industry, government, and media. They don't want the people who do the work and create the wealth, us (most of us), to be organized and as aware as they are. They say unions breed laziness, but these heirs have never worked a day in their life.

<comment><AUTHOR> > there is an aristocracy of heirs who own rights to expropriate surplus labor > time

As a Georgist, I tend to view Marxist critiques such as this as fairly superficial. We agree that something wrong is happening, but a Georgist is able to pin-point the point of unfairness and recommend a remedy, whereas the Marxist believes that any employment generates a "surplus value" (how?), which I'm skeptical is true much of the time.

In short, I see this line of reasoning as the result of conflating capital and land, at the expense of the honest employer.

Unions are clearly a powerful tool to allow for collective bargaining, and advance the position of labor. But I don't think it affects the fundamentals of the economy―what is being produced, where. I tend to think unions have declined in America largely because the efficiency of our economies have declined in the places they were most effective.

<comment><USER3> The stuff we see in Wisconsin for example, IMO, is directly connected to the 1980's rhetoric and sentiment around unions that never went away.

While both sides have perfectly valid arguments for and against unionization, there is no compromise or middle ground to be found, only partisanship from the politicans who are charged with finding compromises, who have the power to make and break unions.

I do agree with your point about efficency declining, but I also smell a fish when it comes to partisan politics surrounding unionization of workers. Both sides seem too concerned with ultimatiums and heel-digging.

Surely there is a way to compromise, but if neither side will sacrifice you can't get anywhere at all.

<comment><USER4> If you and another person are arguing over what's for dinner and the other person's position is "lets eat tires" \- there is no compromise possible.

At some point, it's pretty easy to see that the anti-unionists simply want to destroy all unions and collective wage-bargaining. End of story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For what it's worth, I find the "landlords" explanation here extremely compelling. In the last year, I've happened upon the works of the 19th century economist Henry George (who identified landlordism as the root cause of poverty) and found his distinction between land and capital to explain many of the "paradoxes" we have in modern economics.

I recommend checking out his work, but if anybody is curious about details of his economic theories, AMA.

<comment><USER5> I've not paid a landlord for two decades, but it seems to me that home owners like myself compete with each other to bid up the price of property. If I earn more, that gives me more capital with which to bid for a bigger house in a better location and hopefully outbid someone else doing the same thing. So disposable income flows directly into increasing house prices.his isn't theory, it's what I've been doing for the last twenty years.

Edit: I'm not complaining, this effect has dramatically increased the values of the two properties I have owned (one after the other) during that time. I fully expect to come out well ahead, but it will be a problem for my children. I expect to have to help them fund their first property purchases, perpetuating the cycle.

<comment><USER6> > _but it seems to me that home owners like myself compete with each other to > bid up the price of property_

That seems like a side effect of the global crash in interest rates: People buying homes with cash are currently competing with borrowers with much less than 20% down and low interest rates.

btw, this is somewhat intended, and is the reason the Fed dropped rates to zero in the first place. If assets were not reflated, the recession would have gone much deeper. Unfortunately, "assets being reflated" means, as one example, people buying assets (homes) with cheap money.

It will be interesting as rates return to normal and the Fed starts to shrink its balance sheet later this year.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, the classic model of how this _should_ work is:

1) Economy sags, people have little demand to borrow money for investment

2) Interest rates are lowered to spur investment

3) Investment takes place, economy recovers

4) People are much hungrier to borrow money for investment, so interest rates increase

We haven't reached (4), and in addition, it should seem surprising that borrowing money to put it into real estate will help the economy to recover. Unlike investments into production, an investment into land doesn't seem to actually affect supply and demand in a way that will help the economy grow.

<comment><USER7> With debt to GDP ratios at all time highs around the world we do seem to have reached (4). But money markets aren't free markets, being effectively controlled - and distorted - by central banks. They hold interest rates low to attempt to spur investment in productive capacity. But business investments are motivated not only by interest rates (and labor market "flexibility") but by perceived demand, which, in part due to aforementioned low wage growth, stays weak. Capital and debt flows instead to bidding up asset prices.

<comment><USER8> And in case anyone asks, the fact that lending free money to banks and companies just causes that money to be paid out to the very rich is just a _totally_ unrelated coincidence.

Completely unrelated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The landlords one makes the most sense. Land is not elastic. It is a limited resource, and so it doesn't follow supply and demand. The supply in a city never changes, only the demand does.

And building up isn't necessarily a solution -- it's exponentially more expensive to go up, because you start needing things like elevators and full time building engineers and so on. So going up only keeps things the same, as the price per square foot of going up is higher, only elevating the cost of that land.

Building out also isn't a solution, because people want to be close to the city center or the things they go to the most. Self-driving cars may help with this issue in the long term, but not the short term.

This blog post[0] summarizes some of the issues.

[0] [http://meetingthetwain.blogspot.com/2017/01/live-work- commut...](http://meetingthetwain.blogspot.com/2017/01/live-work- commute-2.html)

<comment><USER10> That doesn't explain the move towards larger cosmopolitan cities, though. The economically rational thing to do if land values in, say, San Francisco or NYC become more expensive is to _move to different cities_ , ones with abundant land and low housing prices. Yet the predominant migration we see is the other way, from small towns and minor cities to big metropolitan areas.

Anyone who's been in this situation could explain the reason why: because most of the good jobs are in cities. But then answering the question of "Why are the good jobs in cities?" brings us back to square one, where we have to consider China, robots, monopolies, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm reminded of Jane Jacob's statement about the economics of cities: "To seek 'causes' of poverty in this way is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes." [0]

To find that a small city that used to have a manufacturing plant is now struggling shouldn't really be surprising―the city never really had a robust economy, and it's hard to say that it really has a future.

Getting a functioning economy that works is really a sort of black magic―when it happens, capture it! Our big cities are one of the surest places we see it, so maybe the real question isn't "why are people moving towards larger cosmopolitan cities," but "why are we making it so hard for our cities to accommodate them?"

[0] [http://www.efficology.com/the-gift-of- relationships/apprecia...](http://www.efficology.com/the-gift-of- relationships/appreciating-government/455-jane-jacobs-the-economy-of-cities)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I argue the reason is the threat of exapropriation has been lifted. I think we forget in the 21st C. how scary the Russian revolution and the Great Depression were to the owners of capital. They saw that if they didn't give labor a greater share of production they could be strung up.

Their solution was to buy off labor with democratic socialism, and then once the threat of exapropriation had past (1970s), claw back the capital. They neutralised the threat of labor ever being a threat again by identifying the potential leaders and co-opting them into the upper-middle classes via universal education and scholarships for the very talented - they wanted to make sure there was no risk of another Lenin arising.

All in all it has been a brilliant play, but we should not forget the rich have been advised by the best and brightest for sometime now.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a great amount of truth to this; anyway, it's essentially what Michael Kalecki argued in 1943 in his "Political Aspects of Full Employment".

Anyway, I find it unfortunate that the most frightening reform in the face of the rentier class is Marxism-Leninism, a system that simply doesn't work. It honestly seems strange that the radical proposals of Henry George (and his Land Value Tax[1] that would confiscate all rents) aren't used anymore to challenge this class.

Last time Georgism infused economic reform, we had the age of trust-busting and worker protections. I hope I'm not dreaming when I think this could return.

[0] [http://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf](http://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax)

<comment><USER11> Marxism-Leninism might not work as a mechanism for efficient production, but it is mighty effective in exapropriating the rich.

One thing I have thought about recently is that with better ML if it would be possible today to model the economy well enough to now make Marxism work in practice. The soviets tried in the 1960s using linear algebra, but their models were not practicable. At some point it should be possible to model the economy well enough that capitalism is no longer the only viable alternative.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hell, it's easy to imagine that machine learning could do it.

But like any man-made system, how do we guarantee that the system isn't trained on inputs that generate bias? For in a large economy, bias in allocation is a form of human suffering, large or small.

<comment><USER11> I am sure there would be bias - the question is would it be any worse than the serious bias inherent now. Anyway it is just a thought I found interesting :)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's very interesting. I'd worry most about one thing: that the free enterprise system is inherently flexible, and will allow for new inputs its "designers" never considered.

It'd be a very poor outcome for a neural network that it refuses to consider a new industry that it wasn't trained on... imagine a network trained in the 1950s introduced to the technology of today. (Though perhaps a different way of framing things would let this fall away.)

In general, a market of prices is a useful system for measuring how much people want things. Without a price system, we'd need some new way to measure this...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> what mystery? pay raises haven't kept up with productivity increases. there's also kinds of macro-econ handwaiving that will attempt to drill down into this issue but at a fundamental level worker pay is at the discretion of their managers. the problem is the management culture that distributes profits with extreme preference to shareholders and almost no regard at all for the workers.

<comment><USER13> This is it. Rewards have largely gone to the upper echelons of the management tree. With globalization and automation suppressing wage growth for the majority of the population. This is why we're seeing all of the money go towards fields that: a. can't be automated and b. can't be outsourced

This is also by design, as this was the Reaganite answer to the stagflation of the 70s and a reversal of the income distribution that was forcibly enacted by the New Deal.

<comment><USER14> The default nature of society is are rich and poor. There is by default no middle class. It has essentially always been this way in society. This is because capital accumulates, and rent seeking will always scale better than labor.

America had the prosperity of the 20th century due to explicit programs to create a middle class. Beginning immediately following the 1929 stock market crash with the New Deal, and through the social welfare programs of the 40s of the GI bill and mortgage lending we intentionally created a middle class and society prospered.

If we as society want a middle class we need to create it. In action will remove it as things fall back to historical normal, and actively working against activities that build and support the middle class (like destroying unions) will end it faster.

The other issue is the difference between short term and long term economic efficiency. Optimizing for capitol over labor will almost always provide more short term efficiency. Adding more cheap labor will almost always increase profits. But longer term our society will be always be better off if a larger percentage of our population can be educated, and financially stable enough for invention and improve productivity through technological innovation.

The more people who can have an idea and join the capital class, the more efficient our economy will be. A middle class is exactly what provides this.

Long term economic productivity is dependent on a middle class. Look back throughout human history, times of huge social and technological innovation almost always follow a sudden increase in free time for the average person (ie time beyond the work needed for survival).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This debate unfortunately lends itself to the Fallacy of the Single Cause [1]. I think this article goes a long way to implicitly argue for a multi-cause reason for the problem of uneven GDP distribution.

The global economy is a complex dynamic system, and doesn't lend itself to accurate modeling. So finding cause and effect is an impossible game - especially a single one.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_single_cause](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_single_cause)

</comment><comment><USER16> >Economists are very worried about the decline in labor's share of U.S. national income.

This is not U.S. centric problem at all. Labour share has been in decline in all OECD countries since 70's.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think that the honest answer is currently we don't know for sure.

Pickety's argument amounts to (IMO) that this is the mature state of our current system. Capital generally grows faster than labour and (if it isn't spent), accumulates over time. I think he also implies that it's brought on (or exasperated by) prolonged peace.

One of many ideas... "Capital" is defined (often explicitly) primarily by it's income generating potential. The iconic economist's definition of capital is factories, but most capital today is almost entirely abstract. Companies are some IP, but mostly it's just people. Contracts with people, cultures of people.. Banks are neither. Banks are mostly capital and contracts relating to capital. What does destruction of capital even mean today?

I Krugman's point is tautological. If capital s big relative to labour in a company, that company is by definition labour intensive. "Capital" in modern times just means the amount of income that capital generates. Thinking in terms of factories is (IMO) just wrong if the economy isn't mostly factories.

In any case, I don't think we know what's going on with any useful degree of certainty.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Pickety's argument amounts to (IMO) that this is the mature state of our > current system. Capital generally grows faster than labour and (if it isn't > spent), accumulates over time.

From the article:

> Then there's the idea that landowners, not corporate overlords, are taking > money away from workers. While analyzing the work of French economist Thomas > Piketty, Matt Rognlie found that national income accounts showed an > increasing amount flowing to owners of land.

It's worth noting that in Rognlie's analysis, once we take away the effects of land, the return to capital _ceases_ to outpace production.

Anyway, as far as explaining the non-productive forms of capital we have so much of today―I'd simply conclude that they're not capital at all... Henry George's definition of capital, for instance, excludes them―he made a (IMO very neat) distinction between "Value from Production" and "Value from Obligation"[0] that is a very useful way for considering things. In time, things like "GDP" cease to seem very accurate or meaningful.

[0] [http://schalkenbach.org/henry-george/science-of-political- ec...](http://schalkenbach.org/henry-george/science-of-political- economy/spe214.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> We discovered that we were more efficient if we divided labor.

There was a short supply of people able to do some labor, but demand was high, so wages were high.

We've succeeded at that so wildly, and automated so much of our lives, that we have bountiful free time to train to be successful in modern jobs.

...while there is some specialization in modern jobs, there's a lot of jobs that are NOT THAT SPECIAL. So the pool of people who would be capable of doing them with no or a small amount of training is HUGE.

So wages are low.

There's no magic here, folks.

Meanwhile, Capital has chased not just profits, but OWNERSHIP of profit- generating entities. Rents, right? And they've been wildly successful at it.

</comment><comment><USER19> 1) Unions were crushed. 2) Fed induces a recession whenever wages grow (that's what inflation targeting literally means).

If you read about the power labor had between WW2 and the 1970s it's so alien, it's like science fiction.

<comment><USER20> Technology and the economic emergence of formerly third world countries has done more against labor in the US than the fed and the lack of unions.

<comment><USER19> The plutocrats who spent forty years trying to crush the labor movement didn't think so. Foreign workers didn't cause the Volcker shock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The problem is that money is being redistributed from the middle class to the wealthy by mechanisms of our financial system.

High taxes on labor both reduce wages and cut spending power of working Americans. Then, the money that is removed from the economy by income taxes is then re-created by the federal reserve system and lent out to banks at extremely low interest rates. This money is then lent as consumer credit which redirects wealth to those who own capital in the form of interest.

Essentially Americans are forced to borrow their own money to survive until they can no longer borrow and go bankrupt. The solution is easily executed and within the power of congress or even the president. Reduce taxes to create a deficit then offset it with higher interest rates on corporate credit. Then nationalize the dividends paid out by the Fed to other banks to offset the deficit even more and start charging banks for services they receive through the Fed.

Right now we essentially have a giant welfare system for banks in America that is slowly turning non-capital owning Americans into paupers through constant inflation and wage stagnation.

</comment><comment><USER22> The topmost comment (for me right now) says income levels for workers were flat while corporate profits were skyrocketing based on data from an article in 2011.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which isn't really an alternate hypothesis from the four discussed in the piece:

> Economists are therefore scrambling to explain the change. There are, by my > count, now four main potential explanations for the mysterious slide in > labor's share. These are: 1) China, 2) robots, 3) monopolies and 4) > landlords.

...but rather an effect. (Labor's return is declining, so of course a greater share goes to corporations.)

<comment><USER5> Specifically, to capital intensive corporations.

<comment><USER23> Intensification in general is a good enough explanation. Straightforward economic operations get replaced with complex ones, providing more places to siphon off output. I mean, labor's share in a hunter-gatherer society was 100%. There's little a capitalist can do to grab a share of the nuts picked up off the ground and eaten. There's a lot folks can do to grab a share of the logistics involved in mechanized farming of large plots of land and shipping the produce to local markets.

<comment><AUTHOR> An open question is how much the transition to the "knowledge economy" is changing how we work, and how we build our communities. Communities built solely around manufacturing are suffering today, while we see soaring demand for our dense urban areas (which they struggle to keep up with). This can be seen as the next progression from hunter gatherer, to agricultural, to manufacturing-centered cities.

Should we expect this to continue, or will the knowledge economy come to smaller cities, too? Will VR and telecommuting affect this trend?

<comment><USER24> > Should we expect this to continue

I think the answer is self-evident: the inland cites are undergoing apoptosis by way of opioid suicides and migration to the coasts as inland economic nutrients dwindle away.

Building new cities on the coasts of Africa might be the best way to go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Apple is an interesting example of large company that is extremely labor efficient. I imagine Exxon would be another one.

With productivity falling in the last 10 years [1], companies that are labor intensive can't grow as quickly those that can grow faster by automating their production. [https://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm](https://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm)

</comment><comment><USER26> no comments here about diversity and immigration increasing just as labor's share of GDP decreased?

<comment><USER27> If you read the site guidelines and follow Dan and Scott's comments (you can do that by plugging "author:dang" into the search bar below), you'll find that we're generally not enthusiastic about people injecting partisan political arguments into threads.</comment></comment>


Experts say it may be time for grocery stores to ban customers from coming in - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/19/business/grocery-stores-coronavirus-pickup-delivery/index.html <comment><USER2> How far will this idiocy go?

<comment><USER3> It's about control.

They will take as many rights as they can get, because like anything else, once relinquished, you never get them back.

[https://reason.com/2020/04/17/covid-19-lethality-not-much- di...](https://reason.com/2020/04/17/covid-19-lethality-not-much-different- than-flu-says-new-study/)

<comment><USER4> > They will take as many rights as they can get, because like anything else, > once relinquished, you never get them back.

Its not over yet. The legal challenges to these rights violations will take time working through the courts. Thank god we have a constitution and a military that is sworn to defend it.</comment></comment></comment>


Rise of the replicators   - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627621.200-rise-of-the-replicators.html

<comment><USER2> The article ends with the admonishion that they cannot print something more accurate than the printer itself, but if that is so, is it a physical law?

If it is a physical law, how, for instance, has evolution achieved human minds, and how have people moved from stone tools to...well, we use diamond edges, which are stone. But the point stands.</comment>


Ask HN: What is a better predictor of success for developers? - <AUTHOR> For those of you who have experience in the hiring process for developers, what have you found to be a better predictor of success for applicants: work they've done on side projects or performance in a technical interview? Or something else? <comment><USER2> We administer a take-home project that's not much more difficult than FizzBuzz. We've almost never had a candidate fail to complete it at all (it should take a mid-level developer no more than an hour to code and verify the simplest possible working solution). But a surprising number return code that is awfully sloppy or reveals a fundamental failure to understand the tools they're working with.

One can also usually distinguish juniors and seniors by the level of sophistication of their code. It gives us a good idea of which candidates will be able to work to our standards, or learn to quickly.

However, that's only one component of success. We find that personality is far more important (though also much harder to interview for).

We need people who are capable of self-management, independent work, and structured thinking in an unstructured environment; who relate their work to the priorities of the rest of the company; who communicate clearly and proactively; and who are collaborative and supportive of one another.

People with all those attributes are remarkably difficult to find.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the thoughtful response. Would you be willing to talk to me about your process? You can reach me at the email address on my profile or let me know how I can contact you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Side projects. Show me what you've done, and run me through how you developed it. Since you developed it, you should know the inner workings of it.

<comment><USER4> While this is a true statement, I don't really like this mentality in our field. Just the thought that hiring managers want you to have 15 side projects and a full Github profile, and also work 16 hour days at the office. If you are a programmer/developer and you don't eat your meals at a computer desk while staring at code, you are seen as less.

I love developing it was the best career move i've ever made, but you know what? I also love friends, hiking, jogging, going to the gym, video games, playing guitar, and watching movies.

I don't live to work. I work to pay for the stuff I like to do outside of work.</comment></comment>


Developers of AS3 PushButton Engine says goodbye - <AUTHOR> http://pushbuttonlabs.com/

<comment><USER2> I used to work with some of those guys.

I wonder if Adobe's recent "throwing in of the towel" on mobile flash was the reason for the change.</comment>


Ask HN: What have you done with your Cr 48 since it's come out? - <AUTHOR>

I didn't get one myself, but I'd like to know what all the HN-ers who got one did with theirs.
Did you do anything special, interesting, different?
Thanks, <comment><USER2> Flashed the Insyde BIOS using <http://hexxeh.net/?p=328117655> and got Ubuntu 11.04 at it, when it was just an alpha. Filing bugs since. Will switch to the 11.10 dev version when the first alpha is out.

I always liked to test the development version of Ubuntu and file bugs. I used to do it on my main machine, but the probability of failed boots increased sharply after 9.10, so I stopped.

I consider that I did pay my due to Google: I filed ~40 ChromeOS bugs, 5 Chrome bugs, and developed a Chrome extension. The extension mitigates against a ChromeOS issue and is available in the store [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fopmmgbckkdhedhndl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fopmmgbckkdhedhndlebkfnocagpgmnc)

</comment><comment><USER3> I got one. I tried it, and it was okay for web browsing and it does the job well, 90% of the time. Unfortunately the remaining 10% of time requires use of desktop applications and I gravitated back towards my laptop. Since inertia is a big factor, I ended up not using the CR-48 much. I could say the same thing about my iPad.

<comment><AUTHOR> i was more interested to see if anyone tried to install a different operating system. to me, if you can install ubuntu on there and be able to maintain the 3G service, what else would you want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I got one from a sweepstake thing last month. I use for like an hour after I wake up every dat. Its wonderful and amazing but sooner or later you will realize you need Windows.

<comment><AUTHOR> a sweepstake? tell me more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I let my younger sisters use it as a quick and fast way to get on Khan Academy and other places online. My mother uses it in the evenings to watch lectures for classes. I originally used it in dual-boot mode after partitioning it and ran a screen instance to a Linode box for quick and fast hacking on the fly.

The only disappointing things are the relative slowness from several tabs being open, 3G from Verizon never working at all or starting up, and the annoying blue sad face if you're in dev mode.

<comment><AUTHOR> when you turned it into dual boot, did you manage to maintain the 3G?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would you build a startup to last 100 years? - <AUTHOR> According to Wikipedia, most of the oldest businesses in the world seem to be inns or breweries/alcohol producers:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/ wiki/List_of_oldest_companies
If you were starting a company today and wanted it to continue existing long past your death, what would you do differently? <comment><USER2> Stay away from fads, stay away from cutting edge technology, build something that will always be needed and don't take venture capital money in the first 10-15 years or so.

Why: Fads fade. Cutting edge tech is expensive and generally unnecessary to solve most problems. Startups focus on tech and not on the things people need all the time, housing, electricity, food, water, consumables etc. VC dollars are short term focused, < 15 years say, to build a long term business you need fundamentals early on and you cannot be focused on the short game.

Essentially the key is building something that not only has a need now, but has a fundamental need in the future.

Alcohol is interesting as it isn't a need but a desire/want, and it is fairly highly regulated and has been illegal at times all over the world (still today in some places). Both alcohol and nicotine based products are sticky because they have addictive properties, which even though most people aren't an alcoholic they are drawn to the properties of the drink. One could argue currently social media also shares some of those same traits, it isn't needed and could be argued it is damaging in ways, but people are drawn to it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good answer. All very good points. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure that a new company being a startup, and having a high probability of lasting 100 years, are aligned with each other as goals.

It is possible that I am confused/incorrect about what the term "startup" refers to though. (I thought it generally referred to the "grow fast, particularly high risk of failure" model)

Edit: though, I suppose that "probability of lasting 20 years" and "probability of lasting 100 years" might not be as correlated as I thought?

Perhaps making a company which is more likely to fail quickly, but if it doesn't is likely to become large and stable, would make it overall more likely to last a long time than making one which takes fewer short term risks at the start and which is therefore more likely to stay around for at least a smaller amount of time? I don't know.</comment>


UK Formally Abandons Europe's Unified Patent Court - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/21/uk_abandons_upc/ <comment><USER2> From Ireland, been looking at shenanigans in UK for last 4 years while scratching my head at the madness which seems to have taken over.

Almost daily get contacts on linkedin for jobs both relocation and remote in UK (London and Belfast) and each time I politely point out to the recruiter that (beside the already lower salaries which have not kept up with fall in pounds value) it would not be a wise move to attach one to UK at this time due to all the uncertainty, also there has been a rush of companies setting up here opening up many opportunities while remaining in Europe.

<comment><USER3> London's different. If the world economy falls apart I'd rather be in London than Dublin for job seeking purposes.

<comment><USER4> The cost of living in London eats up any salary benefit. Once you factor in actually having to live in London, or a murderous commute, there is almost no benefit to living in London unless you're young or work in finance. If you're young there are opportunities in London you can't find elsewhere in English speaking Europe if you're willing to live like a pauper for a bit.

<comment><USER5> > The cost of living in London eats up any salary benefit.

Does it actually though? Genuine question having grown up here. I live with my partner, our monthly outgoings living on the zone 1/2 border are ~£800 each for mortgage, bills, car insurance, etc. Last year I earned ~£90k before tax. I don't think I would have earned anything like that amount working in another part in the UK. Even if my cost of living was halved I'd only be saving around £5k a year.

I'm relatively young I suppose and I don't love everything about London, but I see lots of benefits to living here outside of the income, too. I can also be in the (proper) countryside in an hour or so drive at the weekends if I want a change of scenery.

<comment><USER6> > mortgage

When did you buy? I get the distinct impression from friends that even well off techies are struggling to get a big deposit together for a London property nowadays.

<comment><USER5> Late 2018. I got a big income bump in early 2017 and both my partner I and were able to save for a deposit by living frugally for a couple of years. I wouldn't have been able to do it alone though, I think you realistically need two incomes to buy in London.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Shrug. Who even cares any more. The U.K. can abandon everything they want, and any business or person with a brain or eyes to see will abandon them. I did. I'm far from alone. What's the U.K. going to do when there's nothing left but idiots and seagulls?

This also seems like a great opportunity to find any interesting U.K. patents you can, and steal them. What are they going to do, write a letter? They're leaving all mutual enforcement agreements, too.

<comment><USER8> > any business or person with a brain or eyes to see will abandon them. I did. > I'm far from alone. What's the U.K. going to do when there's nothing left > but idiots and seagulls?

Right! Apart from being the 6th largest economy, a nuclear power, a permanent member of the security council, a member of FVEY, the home of two of the best universities in the world, home to London, being a cultural powerhouse for several centuries, home to one of the most established and trusted legal systems in the world, and printer of the pound sterling, the UK is basically completely irrelevant now.

... Brexit is a shit-show and probably a bad idea, but perhaps let's keep the hyperbole to a minimum, eh?

<comment><USER9> >home to one of the most established and trusted legal systems in the world

I live in England and I have very little faith in the legal system, either in its laws or in the prison system. In fact, between criminalizing posession of some pornographic cartoons and the Snooper's Charter, not to mention the mandate that ISPs keep your history metadata for 9 months now, I have lost all faith in the English legal system. The populace that is apathetic to encroachments on rights, freedoms, and privacy, much like how it is currently trending in the US, is even worse given that there is no constitution to protect those rights, and we have to trust _this_ government to create a 'bill of rights'. I can't be the only one incredibly cynical about what that would entail.

<comment><USER10> Please do not forget events such as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guildford_Four_and_Maguire_Sev...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guildford_Four_and_Maguire_Seven), they were arrested solely because they happened to be Irish and nearby an IRA attack.

> At their trial the judge told the defendants, "If hanging were still an > option you would have been executed."

from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Conlon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Conlon)

Considering the amount of cases in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Overturned_conviction...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Overturned_convictions_in_the_United_Kingdom) I would not put too much trust in the UK legal system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would love to understand from anyone, what it is about the European patent system that we're unhappy with and leaving, and what we're doing to overcome the chilling effect on innovation in the UK.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's really a shame for all the small business in the UK what's happening right now. I'm really going to miss them. Lots of hard working people building cool things.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think this is a great timing. I also think the brexit was bad timing overall.

UK's engineering/scientific corp is good with electronics and biomed especially, areas where patents are really important, and having a voice on unifying EU patent without a doubt would have helped them.

They already need to import civil, construction and production engineers, and Brexit will probably end with a no Deal when the country is trying on giant infrastructures with a bit of central planning smell (and great job Corbyn&Friends on that by the way).

</comment><comment><USER14> UK is a rich country. They can get higher productivity by simply hiring laborers from Europe and not giving them same standards of work and life which EU demands from member states.

That's enough for UK manufacturing to bounce back again.

</comment><comment><USER15> you cannot be half in, or half out. They wont let us pick and choose. I voted leave, so we are all the way out. Or we are all the way in.

<comment><USER16> The hilarious thing is that Britain _was_ half-in, half-out:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_opt- outs_from_E...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_opt- outs_from_EU_legislation)

Brexit is like the Aesop's fable of the greedy dog dropping its bone into the water in the attempt to grab its reflection.

<comment><USER17> >Brexit is like the Aesop's fable of the greedy dog dropping its bone into the water in the attempt to grab its reflection.

I love this. It feels very apt (said from a UK expat, watching his country slowly unravel from afar)</comment></comment></comment>


Serverless Framework V0.1.3 – Reusable Project Templates Reduce Config - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/serverless/serverless/releases/tag/v0.1.3 <comment><USER2> would someone be able to give me link to documentation that describes how to deploy a todomvc type app using lambda and serverless. I'd love to give this a go</comment>


Why We Should Think Twice About Colonizing Space – Facts So Romantic - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/why-we-should-think-twice-about-colonizing-space <comment><USER2> Mankind has been given a vibrant and beautiful world, full of life and resources. Should we collapse the biosphere, and turn the planet into a dead world from war, pollution, and genetic targeted destruction of life, turning the whole thing into a desert, why should we be welcome anywhere? Right now if we wanted to colonize mars, for example, we would need to further carve up the Earth's resources. We need a supplyline from Earth to Mars to live there. Mars is incredibly inhospitable to life. The soil has perchlorates in it. There is no crop you can grow on it. There is little water. By any measure it is a sterile and dead planet. You could have green houses on it. But you can do that on earth and save the rockets and the heroic missions to move a handful of people there.

Torching the planet and sending a seed to the universe to torch the rest of it wrong.

I am not against space exploration. But sending swashbuckling space saliors to other planets to seek out new life and new civilizations is just a fantasy. On the other channels on the TV we see what is really going on. And I got to say, I don't like it one bit.

Maybe thousands of years of progress with a sustainable civilization in the vein of the Romans but with high technology would make us worthy to pack our bags and visit other star systems. Right now everyone lives like there is no tomorrow anyway. Our species isn't mature enough yet to handle this world, let alone the rest of the universe.

Lets master this planet first before we move on.</comment>


Down and out in the magic kingdom – A tale of software consulting in the midwest - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@raymondchandler/down-and-out-in-the-magic-kingdom-92b0a715778f#.e4tktd8t9 <comment><USER2> I spent 10+ years doing contract software work, and several of my friends work for contracting firms, and I have seen this pathology a lot.

 _Don 't_ stay up until 2AM working on your contracting firm's projects. _Don 't_ personalize contract assignments. _Don 't_ act for your firm's clients like you're their full-time employee: you aren't. _Don 't_ assume clients are OK with you coming in super late because that's what programmers do: many aren't OK with that.

There are some really great things about working for contracting firms: you get a W2 and benefits and mostly all the downside risk protection of an employee while getting exposed to all the random projects a consultancy gets. You get to dip your toes into lots of different projects. And when you get sick of a certain kind of project, often, you can easily no-harm no-foul switch to other projects. Contracting firms can be great.

But if you try to treat a contracting firm the way you would a startup or tech product company, things are going to suck for you. In particular: you _must_ force yourself to deliver a day's worth of work and then put things down. If you're compulsive and need to work late into the night, _stop doing client work_ , and switch to personal projects.

Contracting firms usually can't bill for your 2AM binge coding session. Clients generally want to pay for work done during business hours on a well- defined schedule. It does not matter that you believe that's not how software is delivered; it's how software is bought. If you run yourself ragged refactoring things until late in the evening, your contracting firm isn't going to be impressed with you: they're going to see, from 1000 miles away, that you're burning yourself out pointlessly in a manner that isn't going to make them an extra penny, and they're going to get pissed.

<comment><USER3> It's interesting that the attorney's letter specifically says "termination of your _employment_". Add that to the fact that he was "fired" initially because he didn't show up for work, and it looks like he has a good case of arguing that this was a de-facto employment situation, not a contracting gig. How and if he could benefit from that, I don't know.

<comment><USER2> You're missing a subtlety. He's a W2 employee of a contracting firm. Most of the work he does is for clients, not his employer directly, and to those clients he is a 1099, not an employee.

He was fired from the contracting firm, for which he was a W2. His status doesn't really factor into this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Minor correction: I am a partner in the contracting firm. The contract was cancelled by Pillar as a 1099. I'm still a partner in the contracting firm but will be leaving in a couple of weeks when we shut it down for obvious reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is bad. It's a car-wreck at best and all it will do is have everyone hit the breaks as they pass that particular stretch. Developers are not going to rise up as brothers and sisters in arms based upon what you have written here. Instead, they will distance themselves from you further because you are Drama.

Also, you named a whole bunch of people who are probably very unhappy to be associated with this mess. I would hate to have someone search for my name and have this turn up.

All in all, you come across as being reckless and it makes you a liability. You can't acknowledge that your Facebook post was a lapse in judgement and then double down with a novella on Medium.

Give some serious thought to re-establishing that separation between your personal life and your work life. Stop with the social media. Focus on your health and your sanity. Get a hobby outside of your job. Learn how to cook healthy dishes. Exercise. These are things all of us probably need to do since we love what we do and want to be the best we can be and give way too much to do so.

<comment><USER5> Yes. Poor form to drag others into this, especially naming people who have asked not to be named. Also, it's a bit asymmetric as the company isn't in a position to defend itself.

If a company lets you go, you shouldn't ever expect to go back unless you're invited.

I do appreciate and respect the author's honesty about the personal issues he encountered along the way. I hope that he gets his health in order, and finds happiness in his next role.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > So, I was in! A 3 month contract was drafted that would run through > Blueshift, so if anything went south, either of us could walk away, no harm, > no foul.

You are a contractor. You can walk away. And so can they. Why create trouble?

> About a week into the project I began having bladder problems.

> So for the next 4 weeks I missed a ton of work for doctors appointments, and > coaching, and fitness, and whatnot to get my life on track.

Right after the project starts, you become unreliable for them for 4 weeks out of a 3 month project.

> This time I gave them 6 weeks of notice.

You have a solid week. Then you are in and out for 4 weeks. Then you put in your notice after a week of solid work.

Then you don't show up.

With that timeline, you would have to expect to get fired. It happens. Move on. Don't look back.

All the public posts makes for a nightmare to deal with. They hired you and then they had to deal with you trashing the company on social media. And now you are trashing them on another platform.

Another huge mistake is that you weren't taking care of yourself. Why show up early and leave late while working as a contractor? Why take work home with you? Just put the time in between start and finish and call it a day. If you are going to put in extra hours, put that time into creating more leads and building your image. Certainly you aren't going to do all that by trashing your previous clients.

I don't think contract work is for you.

</comment><comment><USER7> I see a developer who's in and out of a company depending on his mood and opinion of the company several times, then complaining when he gets fired for not showing up at work.

He blames the all night coding session, but from the sound of it told no one he was doing this, and operated in a bubble. Then he seems surprised when at 11:04 the next day (which is almost 9 hours after he's gone to bed) he's woken up by a message asking if he's alive. The author, by his own admission, is unreliable.

To the author - it sounds like there's a huge disconnect between your opinion of your usefullness to the company and theirs. Perhaps instead of giant middle fingers on blog posts, consider thinking about it from their perspective.

<comment><USER8> Careful; I got my tail ripped off last week here on HN for suggesting that people "be adults", show up for work _on-time_.

<comment><USER9> Who decided, and when, that being an "adult" meant strict conformance to an unnatural schedule? Cui bono?

<comment><USER10> Pretty much anyone who decided to work for a company where the agreed upon hours are from X to Y. You can complain about it being unnatural all you want, but if those are the hours that you agreed to, then you're obligated to conform to the schedule. If you don't like it, work remotely for a company whose normal business hours fit your schedule.

Being an adult is not necessarily about conforming. It's more about sticking to your obligations. Even if your word means nothing to you on a personal level, others are probably depending on you to come through.

<comment><USER9> I totally agree with honoring commitments. I strongly disagree with the idea that committing to 9-6 or 8-5 in a rush hour commute is the definition of being an "adult".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Disclaimer: These are my views. Not my employer's.

I currently work for Pillar. I met Ray for the first time fairly recently. He seemed like a smart, passionate developer and it breaks my heart to see him having such a meltdown. I've had my own sleep issues and the last company I worked for seemed to be talking out of both sides of their mouth. I understand what that can feel like. It's a really hard thing to go through. I would also say that when you're barely sleeping at night, you make poor decisions and start to look at the world through a warped lens.

Yes, the company is goofy. The CEO can be a bit of a blowhard, the titles seem kitschy and uninspired, and there's a lot of self-congratulatory aggrandizing that goes on. It's a consulting firm. It's not surprising.

But the people are excellent. Imagine an oasis of nerds (okay, maybe don't) that really care about software quality in the center of a market that needs a lot of help. They're committed to education, community involvement, and each other. It's really pretty great to work here.

That is, as long as you don't get it twisted. On time and under budget still matters. Perceptions still matter. Politics, expectations, and realities are all things that you're going to have to deal with no matter what. Your ability to balance all of these things is part of what makes you effective at your job.

I don't know the particulars of the circumstances that led to his termination. I don't really want to know them. It would be irresponsible to postulate. However, I can say that I'm disappointed with the way that he's chosen to move on. It's good for no one. I see a thoughtful developer burning bridges in public.

That can be cathartic, but at what cost?

<comment><AUTHOR> Against my better judgement, I feel it necessary to reply to this.

I tried very hard to end things on a positive note with Pillar. I called Don repeatedly trying to connect with him, I called Jim repeatedly trying to connect with him, and I tried having a civil and adult conversation with Brandt.

What I got was silence, insults, and a legal demand letter for venting to friends and family on Facebook, and a permanent ban from attending user groups hosted at Pillar. User groups that I brought into Pillar.

Do I fault Pillar for firing me? No, of course not. I was a little upset, but I get it. But what they did wasn't an appropriate response and after I learned that they did this to other people as well, I had to act.

Talk to the other developers on my team, they will tell you that I was in good spirits and wished them both well in the future when I got in touch with them.

I did my part to handle things professionally, I really did. Pillar escalated this well out of proportion than it needed to be. Someone needs to speak up and say something about the way Pillar treats people after they are done with them and how they handle critics (these other people who, in some cases are legally gagged against speaking up).

<comment><USER12> Just stop talking.

Like any bad breakup, it's in _everyone 's_ best interest to just stay quiet, not take sides, and hope this blows over.

You are digging the hole deeper and have been with every Facebook post, the Medium post, and HN comment.

Stop talking. Take a long weekend. Take a week and go do something else. You're only making it worse.

<comment><USER13> Agreed. This is absolutely the advice to follow at this time. As others have said, we all make mistakes, and should learn from them. The lesson on this one is take the time necessary to cool down before responding in these situations. If you are still feeling a sense of urgency and a need to set things right, that should be a sign you haven't cooled down yet, so wait some more.

Naming names (and there were a _lot_ of names in that post, wow) is way over the line of acceptable in this case. Showing up at a client's site to confront your coworker(s) is borderline dangerous behavior. All of the actions mentioned in the post (including the post itself) will only escalate the situation and increase the sense of urgency of all parties. No good will come of that. Cut your losses and move forward. The firing was completely justifiable, and (OP) you know this, let it go.

Again, not trying to shame or judge, a lot of us have made similar mistakes when we were young, but you do need to learn the lessons in mistakes or you will never mature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am going to preface this with the a small piece of information, I work in corporate America.

From my perspective, I don't quite get a lot of the points. No unit-tests? Most code bases don't have them. Cucumber tests? You're already ten giant leaps ahead of most products out there.

Code in disarray? Used to it for every single project I have to come into. Factories/viewers at least there is some semblance of structure!

False corporate goals? It's a company, I expect nothing else from them.

Weird North Korea chants? That's just weird as hell.

Again, I don't work in SF or NY so it's hard to know what exists within startup culture, but to me all of this just sounds like the norm. There is much less importance placed on decent code then there is on just getting something out.

<comment><USER15> At one time, I thought Medium carried articles of importance and repute. I no longer think that about most of them.

Medium is just a place where anyone can throw anything up there and have a potential of get linked to.

<comment><USER16> Every popular website will go through Eternal September at some point: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)

The challenge is how to enforce quality despite the surge in users.

<comment><USER17> A required lurking period, maybe?

<comment><USER18> Unlikely to work. Required lurking means lack of participation and thus lack of learning.

My counter suggestion is to encode the culture you desire in to the function of the site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm not a professional Python coder, so maybe I'm missing things, but I can't tell if this is really subtle sarcasm or not:

> What they did have was a frightening-looking hodge-podge of cucumber-esque > feature tests. I say cucumber-esque because A) It wasn't cucumber, and B) > The feature files weren't even Gherkin compliant. It was Lettuce. The > scourge of Python software testers everywhere!

So they had tests, but they weren't the tests you like?

> What followed was probably the most stressful week of attacks and counter- > defense I've ever encountered in my career for a few hundred line code > change.

A "few hundred line code change"? Could this refactor been split-up over more, smaller changes perhaps? The last time I was forced to make a change of _hundreds_ of lines, it took days to work-out the justification with all involved. You'll find the effort much more efficient if you are able to split up the code reviews.

I stopped there. I just can't tell if he's actually serious or not.

<comment><USER20> As a professional Python coder I had to look up Cucumber and Gherkin. I wasn't sure whether it was sarcasm either. And then I learned that Lettuce actually exists as a free alternative to Cucumber.

Who named these things, Javascript devs? (I jest, but Python has pretty clear naming usually)

EDIT: For those of you downvoting - consider the impression this gives to someone who doesn't know what Cucumber is (particularly in a ranty blog): you tell them "Oh no sorry, I was expecting to see Cucumber, but they were using Lettuce which isn't Gherkin compatible". I think it's entirely reasonable to think that those aren't real packages...

<comment><USER21> Cucumber and Gherkin originated in Ruby.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Don't do this. It conflates so many personal/professional things it fails to give any idea whether this company is objectively good or bad and just ends up making the author look massively unprofessional.

By all means call out a company, but don't write angry, keep it professional, and most importantly don't be a dick.

<comment><USER23> I agree. I struggled with something recently and just decided there is no way to write about it without sounding like a whiner. Best just to move on and let it go. So that is what I'm doing. It sucks. Sometimes things just don't work out. But that is life.

In the end, I often think these kinds of things, if channeled correctly, have have a positive impact. But one has to be open to stepping back and being honestly and thoughtfully critical of everyones actions including your own.

Although I'd really like to read some examples of companies being called out without anger and with a professional tone (not doubting, just open to links if you have them).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think this is a perfect example of why one needs to learn to not get emotionally involved with "the job". I've made that mistake, once, and it cost me 5 years of my life (long, now boring story), but to blow up so publicly... Not cool at all.

I can appreciate the OP's enthusiasm and idealism, but in the real world, one needs to learn the limitations of that. And to be dealing with so many health problems at the same time... Psychological stress is typically a factor in "acting-out"; I've been there myself so I'm not entirely unsympathetic... Being diabetic sucks, let me tell you. The stereotypical stuff associated with IT (long hours, stress, free garbage food, diet soda galore, pizza..) are counter-productive when you're diabetic.

I hope the OP takes a vacation and gets some perspective.

At the end of the day, it's only all about business. The people who control the money do not care in the slightest about doing things 'the perfect way' if it seems it would cost more money or impact profits. This is something engineers have to learn (or they have to run their own company, which will teach them some hard lessons in how business actually works). As others say, a contractor who is obviously costing more overall than being productive is a liability, so to expect a business to care about you as a "human being" is a little naive. HR is never your friend.

</comment><comment><USER25> I sympathise with how you're feeling super wronged. I think it takes a special level of "pissed" to post something like this out there with your name on it.

But my 2 cents if you're interested.

No one is going to care. The company that you're angry with, least of all. They will just try to screw you with legal action. They will likely succeed considering you are an individual and they likely have a big legal warchest to punch you with. Developers will continue working for them, customers will continue giving them money - but the same can't be said about you or your small consulting firm until this blows over - if ever. Take the perspective of the company and their clients, bitter as it may be. You just look like someone who didn't deliver and are now making lots of excuses and raising a hullabaloo on the internet. Try to make a settlement with them and get this thing buried forever.

You have a very strong emotional connection to your work - you love writing code! This is great. Just applied in the wrong place. Contracting isn't for you my friend, it doesn't always engender itself to this kind of emotion and you have to be able to live with that. Your options are:

1\. Become less attached to your _work_ code. Do what you are being _asked_ to do, no more and not less - and never set the criteria yourself. Work on other stuff.

2\. Go work for a startup (or start one) where your emotional connection to doing high quality work (per your perception of quality - unit tests are no guarantee) - is highly valued.

Most important of all, like everyone else is saying - please take a break.

<comment><USER26> Actually ... there is someone who will care. They would have been his next employer but found these posts during the background checks and decided to forgo the drama and business interruption he would be likely to cause.

I know he's planning to work in his own startup, but can he get along with his new partners in the long term? My guess is no but I'll wish him the best all the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Anyone else disappointed that this had nothing to do with The Doctorow book? [http://craphound.com/category/down/](http://craphound.com/category/down/)

<comment><USER28> I read the whole thing expecting something a reference to Disney's hall of presidents or some use of reputation as a currency.

<comment><USER29> Well, he feels he was unjustly pushed out of something, and he did use up all of his social currency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I have some advice for the author.

Go back and edit this; remove the big middle finger image and tidy this up to be more professional. It's ok to write it (kind of), but seriously you made a "fuck you" logo?

Would not hire, or interview, or want to be associated with professionally.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. It muddles the message. I've updated the article and removed that image. It was intended as a sort of defiance against their Cease and Desist however, it was indeed, in bad taste.

<comment><USER31> If I were you I would just delete this post. If I looked up your name as part of an interview process and found this article I would not touch you with a 10ft pole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My spidy sense is tingling, but I can't place my finger on it.

I had not heard of Pillar before, and really still have no opinion of them now.

I think the author needs to take a few months off and get his life in check before getting a new job, and perhaps remove himself from social media.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'd stay far away from hiring anyone who explodes like this as a consultant.

<comment><USER34> He really shouldn't have included the FB rant. Up to that point, all you had to go on was his side of things. After it, you have to reevaluate all of his seemingly reasonable comments about his behavior and theirs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > I try driving up to the client site to remedy the situation, and I am > rejected from entering the property. Brandt enters the hallway, puffs up his > chest and proceeds to lay into me so hard I thought I was in the Marine > Corps.

Yes because at that point, you're trespassing.

You have _NO_ legitimate reason to be on the customer's site. Further, you probably signed something saying that you wouldn't contact (or maybe just solicit) Pillar's customers for N months.

If you ever get fired by one of these groups, cut off all contact with the customer _immediately_. You might still try to smooth things over with the contracting company but even that is a bad idea _the day_ it happened.

<comment><USER12> Btw, this is why I _never_ host regular meetups at my employer's office. If something bad happens in either context, it _will_ spill into the other and make life more difficult than it needs to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Of course you're going to meet resistance as the new guy telling everyone else how messed up a project is.

When starting at a company never try to change anything about it within the first several months of working there. Learn what they do. Emulate what they do.

After you've reached a trusted status then you can start suggesting improvements.

Don't be that guy.

<comment><USER36> I tend to be "that guy", and I don't really see any major problem if things are actually bad.

Last time I tried to "fix" something, it was four months into a job where the scheduling server was put onto my shoulders to fix, among the other things I was asked to fix, simultaneously somehow. I spent two weeks on it and digging through terrible java logs filled with red herrings galore and a badly designed Oracle schema. My boss helped out at the end, but at no point were developers willing to spend a fraction of that time to fix their own code. I mean, they said they would, but never did. What do you do when upper/mid managers and developers aren't willing to fix a major issue that effects prod's upstream and you're wasting 20 hours a week on something they can easily fix? Continue flailing while affecting my reputation in the meantime since I can't figure it out?

Every company I've ever worked at has told me, "You have a fresh eye, so if you see anything wrong, we trust your expertise, so you should bring it up." When trying to exercise that, though, it consistently ends with push back from all sides. Every time, then, I bring up the initial mention of a fresh eye, where they agree, apologize, and nothing comes from it.

My experience is my own, my learning methods are my own, and I was hired for that reason. If someone's hired on trust and experience that they can do a good job, then forcing "emulation" is a slap in the face. I'm not saying that they shouldn't try to fit the workplace's work patterns, but trying to force someone to do something that's orthogonal to their natural flow or experience without listening, then of course there'll be resistance!

There's a point where resistance is good. There's a point where it's bad. There's also a point where not listening to that resistance is worse than the resistance itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The notice of termination is dated April 28 (yesterday). The Medium post is just 8 hours old and is long enough to take nearly 20 minutes to read.

It's rare to see a burn-the-bridges rant in which the author looks good...and even then, you basically have to be Steve-Yegge-level to come out looking like the better dev (not that Yegge's essays can be considered "rants"), But I can say with certainty that I've never seen a ranting essay _delivered within a 24-hour period_ that was well-thought out or flattering to its author. That is simply too short of a time after a long emotional battle to have the right perspective on things, never mind the emotional health and energy to think things clearly.

My advice is to kill the essay, take a week to simmer down, and reread it after you've calmed down and got back to normal life. Repost it if you feel you need to but hopefully you'll see that many of your complaints are rather minor in the big scheme of things, certainly not worth raising such a wall of bad blood for.

</comment><comment><USER38> _> Pillar's on-boarding processes includes watching a long series of training videos on their "Step-It-Up" program talking about who Pillar is, and why they do the things they do. They talk about things like Craftsmanship, Test-Driven- Development and consulting skills._

 _(...)_

 _> Now, for a company that prides itself on Craftsmanship and TDD, surely there should be unit-tests somewhere, right? To my surprise, the project they landed me on had absolutely ZERO unit tests!_

 _(...)_

 _> So I did what any "Craftsman" at Pillar would do and I argued for us to start writing better tests. Unfortunately to my complete surprise, not only did I meet resistance with the client, I met resistance within Pillar itself!_

That is a good example of the dissonance between the idealism and jingoism of the (internal) marketing and the reality in the field.

When the choice opposes

\- doing things right, at the first attempt and building to last

to

\- doing things fast and on the budget (undercut to catch up to the race to the bottom)

it always ends up like this. People (and companies) that know the right way but chooses the alternative.

</comment><comment><USER21> > _In January 2015, I accepted a position as a Software Craftsman at Pillar > Technology in Columbus, Ohio_

Software Craftsman?

<comment><USER39> when I was a kid I would tell people I was a 'Senior IT Consultant', now if anyone asks I tell them I'm a computer guy

<comment><USER26> For years my wife was a stay at home mom - if people asked what I did, I said I was a "go to work dad". When pressed further, I often said techie, or nerd or worked on computers and electronics.

I've been a CTO twice (at relatively small companies) but if I ever said that, people might get the impression I'm one of those MBA guys (can't have that).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Now already a "correction" that casts light on everything else OP wrote:

"I mistakenly asserted that Sara was "driven out of the company". After talking with Sara she informed me that she left on her own accord and in-fact has maintained a very good relationship with Pillar."

I don't see anything really wrong with the company here. Okay, they are possibly a bit wrapped up in their own founding story and have a higher opinion of their code writing skills in the abstract than in the concrete. That's pretty...normal. Maybe they even suck as a company, who knows? But this isn't some clearcut story about a company doing something terrible. No one is going to read this and think, "I need to contact this terrible company." It reads like a rant. OP, seriously delete this. I get that you are angry right now over what you perceive as being terminated without cause but this will hurt you more than it will hurt them. It comes off as more than a bit immature, even now that you deleted the FU picture. It sounds like you are a good coder with some health issues. Get your life back together, take some freelance work, and figure out your next steps. That will all be a lot easier without this coming up in google searches. I don't say that to be a jerk, just from someone that has also been wrapped up in my own personal story a bit too much at times.

</comment><comment><USER41> In short, the message is at the end of the article.

The person gives 6 weeks notice of leaving the company. Before then he works overnight on a bug, oversleeps and takes a duvet day to recover. Company fires him.

<comment><USER42> That's great! Now he gets unemployment compensation until his next job.

<comment><USER43> Not as a contractor he doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Not about Disney, but about "Pillar Technology in Columbus, Ohio".

<comment><USER45> Yeah - I don't grasp where the magic kingdom came from in the title. That's a phrase I straightaway associate with Disney, and it isn't even used in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> There are a lot of possible lessons here, but after reading the whole thing the only point I can come up with is "Problem exists between chair and keyboard."

</comment><comment><USER46> Another developer with rose tinted glasses that expected too much from an employer and got burned for it.

This is seen all the time, starting with expecting to have the interview process tailored to their whims to expecting their feedback to be immediately implemented and taken as near gospel.

This is a more tragic case of a person not versed in the specifics of contract employment thinking he is owed more for providing more than was originally asked.

</comment><comment><USER47> Some advice. Don't air your dirty laundry about former employers in public. It may help you feel better but nothing good will come of it. Simply move on.

</comment><comment><USER48> Regardless of what went down, there's a certain pragmatism to consider before writing an article like this. Next time you apply for a job, they will Google you, they will find this post, and they will weigh the value you offer against the risk of a similar outburst should things go south (and there's a risk with every new-hire that things will go south).

</comment><comment><USER49> PSA: This isn't about Cory Doctorow's sci-fi novel of the same name

</comment><comment><USER50> The author burned himself out and then tried to shift the blame onto the person he's contracting for. Taking care of your physical and mental health is part of being a professional programmer too.

</comment><comment><USER51> The main thing I get from reading this is that the author thinks very highly of themselves.. Perhaps a bit too much, which is why they seemed surprised when they got fired for not showing up.

I sympathize with the sleep apnea bit, though - that can turn your life into living hell unless it's properly treated. Mine almost killed me - I did a writeup that's archived at [http://weblog.mrbill.net/archives/2014/01/13/falling-in- love...](http://weblog.mrbill.net/archives/2014/01/13/falling-in-love-with-my- wife-v2-1/)

</comment><comment><USER52> If every employee at Pillar pulled out a bullet list of accomplishments from their annual performance review- it would seem everyone from the admin to the CEO saved the company from death multiple times. If everyone of these guys flashed those every time they screwed something up- it would be very hard to operate a company. There is give and take at work and its good to be aware of that line is.

</comment><comment><USER53> "I nearly killed myself for Pillar, and this is the result of that hard work and dedication."

And hopefully now, he'll learn his lesson and never do it again as pretty much everyone in the industry learns if they don't burn out before they do. Employers don't give a shit about you. If you don't/can't understand that, you're not a professional yet.

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm playing a bit the devil's advocate here but there's two side to every stories. I've known employees exploding like this, convinced in their mind that they are right when in fact it is not so. Everyone is the hero of their own stories and some people are very good at rationalizing their action after the facts to convince themselves they are in the right.

It seems weird that he was fired just after putting an all nighter and resting the next day but there must have been some reason for that. It'd be surprising if there were no reason at all...

</comment><comment><USER55> This is a perfect example on how not to handle professional conflict. I would point out all the mistakes you've made and that is just from your point of view as described in the article but everyone else here have pointed those out.

For your own sake I suggest you take this down, otherwise you may find it difficult to find work later on. If you are ever in a similar position like this again you need to learn to not take things personal and walk away while you still have some dignity.

</comment><comment><USER56> I think this was a very bad way to react.

But also I don't agree with anyone else here that firing an employee on the spot because they miss a day of work is to be expected. To other devs reading this, you don't have to put up with that. Life happens. He should have sent an email at 2:30am, but his company should have understood as long as he was getting things done. You are truly better off not working for them.

<comment><USER57> Consultants are not employees. Consultants are allowed to take off days anytime. They're allowed to start work at anytime and end work at anytime.

<comment><USER57> Legally speaking a consultant only must be paid 1 hour per pay period to bound to their contractual agreements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> The article has little to do with the Midwest and a lot to do with poor software development practices that are actively encouraged in the community that is his language of choice. Granted, it can happen anywhere, but I got bored after the first Java rant

</comment><comment><USER59> Rule #1 about being a contractor: You can't care about the problem more than the customer. If you do, it will not end well.

<comment><USER57> Clients pay consultants to make use of what the client has to deliver the solutions the client wants.

Give them what they're paying you for or get the f* out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I like his medium description:

>Board Game Designer, Programmer, Musician, Mathematician, Designer, Poet, Lost Romantic, Tech Renaissance Man</comment>


Shape-programmable magnetic soft matter - <AUTHOR> http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/09/23/1608193113.abstract <comment><USER3> People don't even understand how important materials science is. All they think about is digital/hype technologies.

<comment><USER4> This paper looks a lot like a materials hype paper. The mathematics for the design process are interesting, but the material/actuator itself looks pretty poor.

The actuation forces are incredibly low - if i've eyeballed correctly - <USER2> 10 micro newtons and it requires a large bulky magnetic field setup, only shown in the supplementary section.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> how many cycles can this material handle before failure? Typical "muscle-wire" shape memory alloys fail with only a few million cycles.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think they mention time/use to failure. However the quick information I can get on the material: "...we use a two-step molding process to embed a heterogeneous distribution of ferromagnetic and aluminum microparticles into a silicone rubber". So it might have the same durability as a similar composite material.</comment></comment>